Classic Noel Coward Comedy Opens UW Theatre and Dance Season

September 25, 2012 — High spirits and hijinks abound in English wit-master Noel
Coward’s classic drawing-room comedy, “Blithe Spirit,” that opens the
University of Wyoming Department of Theatre and Dance 2012-2013 production
season.

Directed by Lee Hodgson, “Blithe Spirit” runs Oct. 2-6 at
7:30 p.m. and Oct. 7 at 2 p.m. on the Fine Arts main stage. Tickets cost $14
for the public, $11 for senior citizens and $7 for students. For tickets and
information, call (307) 766-6666 or go online at www.uwyo.edu/finearts.

“The play is charming and fun, and is a great way to start
the theatre season,” says director Hodgson. “But, although it’s fluff, it’s not
trivial.”

Offering a respite from the ongoing bombing of London
during WWII, Coward reportedly dashed off in five short days his “improbable
farce” about connubial love past and present. The play ran for nearly 2,000
performances on London’s West End in 1941, hugely raising wartime spirits
following the Blitz. Soon after, the play was the toast of Broadway. It has
since enjoyed many revivals, including an award-winning 2009 Broadway
production featuring Angela Lansbury.

The story concerns urbane novelist and socialite Charles
Condomine, and his wife, Ruth, who invite the eccentric medium Madame Arcati to
their house to conduct a séance as grist for a new book. The couple gets more
than they bargained for when an uninvited guest from the great beyond -- Charles’
temperamental first wife Elvira -- crashes their light-hearted after-dinner
affair. So begins a delightfully cosmic clash of personalities both worldly and
otherwise.

Hodgson says he selected the piece as much for the demands
it places on actors and the themes it explores as for its popularity with
audiences.

“Coward’s plays are so beautifully written that they might
sound easy to execute, but they are really a challenge for the performers, and
the relationships are still very pertinent, still very edgy, and relevant to
modern-day audiences,” Hodgson says.

For example, he notes that for a woman of that time to be a
partner in her husband’s writing, as Ruth is, was really something
extraordinary, but very organic to Coward’s play world.

“Noel Coward never really observed or wrote about a ‘woman‘s
place in the home’ or gender roles directly. Instead, he challenged the norms of
society using comedy and wit,” says Hodgson. “The language never gets old. The
comedy never gets old. And the relationships certainly never get old.”

Photo:Actors rehearse a scene from Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit”
that runs Oct. 2-6 at 7:30 p.m. and Oct. 7 at 2 p.m. on the University of
Wyoming Fine Arts Main Stage. From left are Sean Patrick Higgins, Francesca
Mintowt-Czyz and Amber McNew. (UW Photo)